Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Nami-Nami Easter Brunch 2012

On Easter Sunday we hosted yet another Easter brunch to our dear friends - something of a tradition by now, as we've done this for almost five years, I believe (see overview of 2009 and 2010 and 2011). This year we were twenty people in total - 16 guests and our own little family of four.

Here's an overview of this year's table:

And here are the individual dishes, with links to recipes, where appropriate.

We started with Mimosa cocktails, using freshly squeezed orange juice and Spanish cava. We also drank wine, apple juice and water, followed by tea and coffee later:

Crostini with dill-marinated pork tenderloin and a dab of Meira's cognac-mustard (based on a Bon Appetit recipe):

Our friends Kristiina and Paavo brought along this delicious salad with alfa-alfa sprouts and various citrus fruits:

I had composed a salad of avocado, mango, pumpkin seeds and mozzarella cheese:

A Mason jar full of beetroot-pickled quail eggs. I've written about them before, this time I used beetroot juice, balsamic vinegar, caraway seeds, salt and pepper. I find that 12 hours is more than enough to dye and flavour the quail eggs:

Thinly sliced cold-smoked salmon from my favourite fishmonger, Pepe Kala (this was especially delicious on top of all those boiled eggs we ate):

Thinly sliced Estonian "lardo" or Ristemäe's herb-crusted lard:

There were three desserts. First on the table, a traditional Easter pudding, paskha. Very creamy, rich and delicious. I added raisins, dried sour cherries, pistachios and flaked almonds to the paskha mixture:

10 comments:

Strange, you have something called pashka, in Romania we have something called pasca, but I am sure it is more or less the same. Our Easter is this weekend and I am curious what mom will prepare, I am being pampered!